


A Bit Toasty

by EudociaCovert



Series: The Best Path: Prompt Fills [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Reveal, Sad Fluff, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24127753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EudociaCovert/pseuds/EudociaCovert
Summary: Smellerbee has a revelation during a cold night.
Relationships: Smellerbee & Zuko
Series: The Best Path: Prompt Fills [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1736206
Comments: 28
Kudos: 322
Collections: The Best Path: 5th Anniversary Prompt Party!





	A Bit Toasty

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Peter (Belladonna89)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belladonna89/pseuds/Peter) in the [TBPpromptparty](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TBPpromptparty) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Since Smellerbee already thinks that Zuko's a warchild, what if the freedom fighters saw Zuko benignly and/or accidentally bending? 
> 
> Or maybe they're still in the desert, and it's the only way they'll survive some weird sand bugs is fire?

They know the night will be cold. Their room is mostly underground which helps regulate the temperature, but it’s been stormy and chilled all day and the loss of the sun makes it worse.

Smellerbee tumbles onto the sleeping mat with Jet and Longshot, helps maneuver their one blanket to cover all three of them, lets Longshot pull her close.

Blue watches, stiff, a furrow on his forehead.

“C’mon, it’ll be warmer,” Jet coaxes. Blue shakes his head and sits by the wall instead, like he’s planning to keep watch.

“Shi,” Jet starts, but Blue squares his shoulders and sets his jaw, and they are quickly learning you can’t move him when he makes _that_ face.

She wakes in the middle of the night, bladder heavy. The room is full of even breathing, and she’s comfortably warm. Smellerbee cracks her eyes open and for the briefest moment the (low, always too low) ceiling looks like it’s brightened by a small light. When she turns her head there’s nothing, just Blue, still by the wall, eyes wide and back tense as he watches her. She yawns, squirms out from between Jet and Longshot.

The room is cold without them close, but the mild kind. They may have over reacted, Smellerbee thinks. Either way, she’s glad Blue isn’t too cold.

“Bathroom,” she whispers on her way out, and Blue relaxes, nods once. She moves past the curtain and _that’s_ when she really wakes up.

The night is _freezing_. Out in the hall the shivers take her within three steps. Their room wasn’t hot, or even warm, but the chill wasn’t there. Body heat can account for a lot, but not that much, not with how thin the curtain is. All the heat would seep straight out.

She idly mulls it over as she takes care of business, until she thinks back to Blue, sitting away from them, awake all night. Blue, who has been working so hard, letting himself be pulled closer to them, but always haunted by some deep inner fear, always just a touch panicked and sad. Blue, who didn’t have a father, and instead had a-

She stays there a long time. It’s still just a suspicion. Just a hunch. There’s no real proof, and even if there was, even if there _was_ -

She can’t live the way she used to, under the shadow of Jet’s convictions, sure and protected and so _stupid_. She has to face the world head on now, with all it’s injustices, it’s complexities, all the bads that might have been _good_ and goods that turned _bad_.

How does an Earth Kingdom firebender even survive? How do they trust people when they can’t even trust themselves, how do they make friends, how do they keep going?

She feels the weight when she returns to the room, when she squints at what _might_ be the softest of glows through the curtain, when she steps back into the room and finds it dark but still on the edge of warmth. Blue watches her, careful, searching, with the tiniest touch of _fondness_ , and she smiles at him, small, tired, but honest.

She curls back under the blanket, into the comfort of her friends, and tells herself to let it go.

If she can move on with Jet after the dam, the village, the _fire,_ can forgive Longshot for blindly following a twisted order, can live with herself for doing the same, then…

Then she can forgive Blue for keeping them warm at night.


End file.
